St Louis De Montfort

A turtle, lizard and frog enclosure was designed and constructed, which acts as a self-contained ecological classroom for students to learn about reptile and amphibian habitat and water filtration. The enclosures are fully accessible to students, while being accompanied by their teachers, and includes a dry garden, and bonsai garden.

Central to the design is a creek system, which links each of the enclosures and finishes at a pond and fernery area. In addition to its aesthetic value the creek system offers an important water filtration function, vital to maintaining a healthy habitat for the turtles, frogs and lizards.

Access to the enclosures is by way of meandering path through a rustic gate. The boundary fence was created to incorporate a series of reclaimed pillars, which have been painted by the students and transformed into colourful totem poles.

Constructed from reclaimed and recycled materials, the site demonstrates the sustainable use of materials, and further integrates the concept of sustainability into the school environment.

Stage One

RB Landscapes has designed and constructed a recycled shipping container kitchen classroom and produce garden for St Louis De Montfort Primary School in Aspendale. The project makes up stage one of landscape masterplan designed by the RB Landscape team in August 2012. Paramount to the landscapes design was the integration of systems thinking to demonstrate and integrate the concepts of sustainability in the precinct.

Works included the kitchen classroom, wetland system, permaculture orchard, woodland, aquaponics system and produce garden extension. The kitchen classroom is designed using renovated shipping containers and seats a whole class indoors becoming a great new learning space. Equipped with a state of the art kitchen space, St Louis’ new classroom has provided far reaching opportunities for the school to develop a curriculum around a sustainable lifestyle. The already flourishing produce garden has been extended to include indigenous edible plants, while an existing chook pen transformed into a permaculture orchard. The use of recycled materials fundamental to reinforcing the sustainable use of materials in this precinct, with recycled tyres used to delineate and extend the produce garden, and to create an amphitheatre for teaching.

The integration of a wetland and aquaponics system, demonstrates the far reaching potential for integrating the concept of sustainability into schools. The wetland system in used to purify grey water from the kitchen classroom and manage existing flooding issues on the oval.

The students of St Louis’ helped plant the extensive wetland and produce garden with Richard Bellemo giving each class a guided tour through the new landscape, explaining the aspects of sustainability to students. The workshop concluded with a planting lesson where students from prep to year 6 contributed to the extensive wetland and produce garden. Celebrations of the opening of the kitchen classroom began with a kids teaching kids workshop day, with schools from around the region participating in activities hosted by the students of St Louis De Montfort.